January 16, 2010

In light of the Avatar craze I decided to look back at James Cameron’s last pop culture saturating feat, 1997’s Titanic. Sure, the special effects were mad cool for their day but no film since Titanic has had the allure of Titanic. A few reasons that the Titanic frenzy deserves a second look follow.

“I’ve seen it six times in theatres.” “Wow, but I’ve seen it seven times!” Really… why on earth did we all need to see Titanic more than once or generously twice in theatres? I’d like to think it was because as a human collective everyone decided to examine the fragile state of humanity. In reality, we all loved Jack and Rose and most certainly hated Cal. Admit it, you clapped in the theatre the first time you saw Rose spit in Cal’s face and run to Jack. Jack and Rose’s love story made us all pine for a deep love and intimate connection that would compel us to change our name and start our new lives with only memories of the person that inspired us.

Not to be cliche’ but when I think of inspiration and I think of Titanic, one very important person comes to mind. Not James Cameron but CELINE DION. You can love or hate this song. I choose to love it. I love it now and I loved it in elementary school when they would play the song with sound bytes from the movie itself dubbed in on the radio. I danced at my earliest boy/girl dances to this song and believed in all that it said. Today I still think the song deserves attention. It’s my favorite song to sing at karaoke and (youtube it!) the music video for this song is absolutely hilarious.

While Avatar is admittedly an enjoyable movie with special effects that blur reality and fiction the culture surrounding the movie, the hype, the public fawning of it are minimal in comparison to Titanic. My apologies to the Na’vi of Pandora but Jack and Rose will always be king of the world and that is why Titanic deserves a second look.